re: "military interrogators could torture detainees as long as their only motivation was sadism"

funny typo

well, it'd be funny if it weren't so sad

Whoops, didn't see this up and put a blog up about it just now.

I think Edley was making a pointed remark in using the term "decider". I'd say as far as the academic world goes, his criticisms of Yoo are pretty sharp. He starts off by saying Yoo is a "successful" teacher, but then says that the memos that Yoo wrote were legal jokes and that most of the entire legal community, including Yoo's fellow faculty members, disagree with them.

shorter Dean Edley--

Nuremberg? Never heard of it.

It seems clear that Yoo is entitled to his post. He hasn't yet been indicted, tried, convicted. I think Edley's hands may be tied here.

That being said, some of Edley's argument, the part summarized by Paul

As critical as I am of his analyses, [...] President Bush and his national security appointees were the deciders.

If it were up to me I would certainly see that a lot of pressure brought to bear on Yoo to resign & collect the ever-plentiful wingnut welfare rather than draw a paycheck from the citizens of California.

Could some ethical/legal beagle help me out here. Suppose some criminal defense attorney were hired by a law school to teach Criminal Procedure, and it was pointed out that he had gotten a rapist off who subsequently raped and killed, would that be a reason to ask the school to fire him/her. Are there any moral judgments on the career of a lawyer that disqualify him/her from becoming a law professor. What about the one who spent millions of taxpayer dollars trying to nail then-president Clinton; has he ever been challenged for getting the deanship of a law school? Do lawyers get a free pass to move to public funded academic posts when they have been skunks in the woodpile of history? Could the resume of an applicant for a teaching job say the following (hypothetically of course): "I know my field of law better than anyone else. That I abetted a destructive program for my previous employer is not relevant to my ability. I'm a lawyer; I get a free pass on ethics."

Well, Shrub wasn't the only president to call himself 'The Decider'... I recently viewed a film clip of Eisenhower describing himself as 'The Decider' when talking with the press about Nixon's leverage as a Vice-President.

Berkeley supports fascism.

Isn't there a guy in Gitmo right now who was the freakin' driver for Osama bin Laden? He might not have directed the 9/11 attacks, but he was a, uh, vehicle in the attacks and so we'll hold his sorry ass until Kingdom Come, I guess.

So all Yoo did was write the memo? Somebody else was the Decider? Tell that to the jerk at Gitmo.

Really, Dean Edley? You think that because Yoo didn't personally torture or order other people to, he only cobbled together dubious legal opinions that declared it was okay, that's no reason he shouldn't be teaching Constitutional law?

The fact that he wrote that the Fourth Amendment doesn't prohibit domestic searches by the military "in wartime," that the Constitution's explicit assignment of regulation of the armed forces to Congress means that they're subservient to "commander in chief powers," and cited legal precedents to support his claims when they in fact said the exact opposite, none of these are "material breaches of the professional ethics" unless he's actually broken the law?

Would anyone in their right mind (other than a would-be dictator or corporate criminal) want to work with a lawyer trained there?

To hell with what you think about our school using Bush torture and 4th ammendment violator attorneys to train young lawyers.

signed

Dean of Whores
Screw U.

Just another reason Cal sucks. Are they the Golden Bears because they keep tryin to piss on us?

Uh no. He was told to write an opinion that would provide legal cover for torturers. He did. He's as culpable as they are.

He has a duty to interpret the law correctly, to the best of his ability, he just made shit up and it got people killed.

Getting fired should be the least of his worries.

O my god what has happened this country? I can't believe that. Sweet Jesus - every single person who knew about this and said nothing is complicit in war crime for the love of god - I cannot believe this is the country I grew up in.

I am appalled.

Recent PBS program, Bush's War, makes it clear that Yoo was sought out, because he was willing to write what ever the Cheney Cabal wanted. They shopped around until the found him, and he did not use any independent judgment. He just wrote what the Cheney Cabal dictated.

Ja, und Yoo vas just ein gut soldier.

This is the problem I have with the Dean's statement:
"Was there clear professional misconduct—that is, some breach of the professional ethics applicable to a government attorney—material to Professor Yoo’s academic position? Did the writing of the memoranda, and his related conduct, violate a criminal or comparable statute?"

He is talking about two different subjects. Whether or not Yoo breached the Professional Ethics required of lawyers is quite different than violating a criminal statute. We can sit around and wait to see if he is criminally indicted and found guilty... but that does not mean he should retain his law license until that indictment occurs. If someone were to file a complaint against Yoo in the bar where he is licensed... and if after an investigation it is decided that he is "unfit" to hold a legal license in that state...he will be disbarred. I doubt if any law school would retain a law professor who no longer has a law license... it is a good first start while we wait out the .... what did Rumsfeld call it "a long hard slog"?

Nothing wrong with shredding the Constitution? And teaching, as long as your president starts a war the Constitution doesn't matter he can do as he wants! He is omnipotent! He can torture. He can wiretap citizens! He can lie his ass off! All the lawyers working at the WH, DOJ and Pentagon were/are full of shit.

Let's say Yoo was, hypothetically speaking, a lawyer for Enron.

And let's say he wrote a memorandum to his bosses saying, "hey, loot the company, screw the shareholders and cheat consumers to enrich yourselves. It's legally A-OK. None of those laws that, on their face, say what you're doing is illegal apply to your conduct because you're really great guys."

And then, let's say that when they were put on trial, all these executives asserted an "advice of counsel" defense to negate the intent element of the criminal statutes they violated.

Under those circumstances, the pretextual nature of Yoo's advice would be sufficient evidence of his complicity in a criminal conspiracy to cost him his license.

My point here is that the Geneva Conventions are, like all treaties, the law of the land. Yoo's advice was so facially pretextual, and the way he bypassed his superiors was so unusual, that one could make out a prima facie case that he was complicit as an accessory before the fact in a conspiracy to commit war crimes.

We tossed people into jail in the Nuremberg trials for doing stuff like that.

Actually, the typo "military interrogators could torture detainees as long as their only motivation was sadism" expresses the real outcome of the policy almost perfectly. The Yoo analysis excuses torture in any case provided some ideological excuse can be found (for the good of the USA etc): it's forbidden only if one can (impossibly) show that the torturer acted chiefly from libidinal thrill. But isn't that exactly the result of Bush-style pseudo patriotism and nationalism? --empty of practical morality or purpose, it promises that feelings of personal worth and psychological well-being(=libidinal thrill) can accompany any depraved act done for the alleged higher purpose of national security.

Paging Mistah Kurtz...

Now it is true that during the McCarthy period many faculty (with tenure) throughout the country were fired for Communist ties or even the failure to sign loyalty oaths. It is true that more recently a Professor at a Colorado (?) school was forced out for describing 9/11 in terms of "chickens coming home to roost". Now those were cases well-documented of academic firings over content not over illegal acts. The law dean here seems to play at not knowing the rich heritage of purging of leftwing political ideas by the academy and its administrative enforcers. In Yoo's case, his advocacy of torture seems to be in a class by itself. Would the good dean feel the same if one of his law Professors came to class in full Nazi regalia? Probably. Would he feel the same if one of his law professors came to class decked out in Black Panther outfit? You cna be sure anyone who did would be fired instantly.

- although of course he already had the reputation from his torture memos when he was hired.. OOC@3.57

Now why would any school hire a bu$hist loser with a torture memo rep? Red lights and sirens should go off at the employer's place when a bland, fat, compliant sack of turd like Yoo walks in with his bu$hist resume and his torture rep. It's not as if the world doesn't know that nobody smarter than bu$h was allowed in the room.

Why would Boalt even want him? I don't get it.

Tell ya what, Yoo's Buddha face gonna give Bubba's system what IT wants.

Academic freedom did not Ward Churchill, an equally offensive individual. Of course he was not fired because of his statements in relation to 9/11, that had nothing to do with. His colleagues saw that as part of his academic freedom. They were shocked however, shocked to discover had misrepresented an important statute in the field of federal Indian law, the General Allotment Act of 1887 in his publications and on top of that he made false characterizations in his discussions concerning the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990.

Well in light of those transgressions I think we can all agree that he had to go.

I wonder how much plagiarism, misrepresentations and other factual error's Mr. Yoo has committed? Perhaps the dean should not worry about on the job torture enabling and focus on Mr. Yoo's stance on the legitimacy of the adjustments of the standards used to allocate payment for sugar cane futures based upon the viscosity of the resultant molasses. I imagine they might be shocked by what they might find and send him right out the door.

I gladly yield the point to Liam. Patrick Fitzgerald and James Comey were -- ARE -- better than that, and thank God for them. To be honest, this whole business has made John Ashcroft look good. If I met the man today, I'd have to apologize for my perception of him. (Not to be too snarky, but do you think Ashcroft looks in the mirror every day and thanks God specifically for Alberto Gonzalez?)

Atropos -

John Yoo got tenure in 1999.

That was before the Bush Administration and before torture memos by John Yoo and other Republicans.

That being said, I dont know what the school should do with him. I think the whole Yoo episode is a pretty good example of what Hannah Arendt called the 'banality of evil' - Yoo never struck me as a particularly evil or diabolical person, just someone who ended up giving the system what it wanted.

Rather how Albert Speer gave Hitler what he wanted.

As far as I'm concerned Yoo is one of the most immoral and uttely disgusting human beings walking around. Every single person involved in this in any way is immoral and utterly disgusting.

This is the most anti-American bunch of ideologues we've ever had the misfortune to be cursed with and I have half a mind to devote the rest of my life to seeing them brought to justice. Every one of them. They have made you and I responsible for this - this is a democracy - they did these things in our names and I want redress.

The "decider" didn't put his name on the memo. Yoo did. Yoo wrote it. Yoo defends it.

To defending Yoo's writing of the legal brief as being only the production of an analysis for his client is ludicrous. The memo forgot to include Youngstown in its analysis. The memo was a legalistic piece of crap. If Edley can't find it within himself to fire Yoo for authoring an official memorandum that exculpates torture and declares out of hand that the President can decree the 4th Amendment out of existence, then he should fire Yoo for his gross incompetence in authoring such an unprofessional, poorly researched piece of crap.

Edley will fire Yoo. Give him time. It will happen.

Is being a Consiglierie of sorts a violation of the canon of legal ethics?

It's being a party to the war crime.

Anyone who advised and/or kept their mouths shut are parties to the war crimes.

p.s.

OutOfCountry, thank you for providing
some rational info and assessment...